


Berghof

by aus_der_traum



Category: Historical RPF, Third Reich - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Propaganda, art talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 20:36:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11448615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aus_der_traum/pseuds/aus_der_traum
Summary: from Speer’s autobiography, unpublished fragment:Speer and Goebbels hang out on the Berghof terrace and talk about art.





	Berghof

**Author's Note:**

> Promptfill for [astonishedandastounded](https://astonishedandastounded.tumblr.com) who said:  
> "Would you do a fanfic of Speer and Goebbels flirting with each other but in a joking way and no raunch or smut - they are just having fun with each other?"
> 
> Russian translation by Три слога: [Бергхоф](https://ficbook.net/readfic/5858326)  
> Спасибо! <3

I remember a summer afternoon in Berchtesgaden, a few years before the war. It’s one of the most vivid memories I have of that time. Even today I can see it like a photograph before my inner eye. It was a hot lazy day, the sky a bright blue marquee above us, the Untersberg massif so razor-sharp against the horizon, you would have thought you could touch it if you reached out your hand.

I was sitting on the Berghof terrace under one of the brightly coloured sunshades, Doctor Goebbels across from me. He was talking incessantly about one film or another, a cigarette between his long fingers. He was waving his hands about as he spoke; I remember being worried about him accidentally burning a hole in his light summer suit but not much of the actual topics of our conversation. It was entertaining though. The Doctor could be quite witty if he was in the mood.

 _If_ being the operative word here. The problem was of course that his mood tended to change faster than the weather in the mountains; one moment he was chatty and cheerful, the other he would talk himself into a rage over some small detail, railing against it for the next half hour to either end up sullen and quiet or back at his initial jolliness. You never knew with him, so I used to tread carefully not to incur his displeasure.

It was just him and me, who had stayed outside after coffee while everyone else preferred the coolness of the house over the sweltering heat on the terrace or had gone for a walk over to the tea house on the Mooslahnerkopf. The children were playing down in the garden. Eventually one of his girls, the oldest, Helga, came running up to give him a watercolour she had painted for him. He was very sweet with her; he interrupted his story to accept the gift and praise her for her good work. After she’d happily dashed off again, he looked at me and smiled, showing me her painting.

“It reminds me of Nolde a bit,” he said. “Don’t you think there are similarities?”

I cringed a little at the comparison. I didn’t know how he meant it – as a joke maybe? The whole affair had been a bit unpleasant at the time. Not only because the Führer disapproved so strongly of my choice of decoration but mostly because Goebbels had changed his mind about the pictures overnight. He’d been delighted at first when I had up them up in his house, but after Hitler’s verdict he had called them ‘impossible’. Degenerate abominations. He must be aware that I hadn’t forgotten, I thought. Why bring it up now?

“In this case I’d say it’s preferable to her painting like Ziegler,” he said with an odd curl of his lips.

Was he making fun of me? Ziegler was Hitler’s favourite painter but his naturalistic nudes really weren’t suited for children.

“I suppose so,” I said, thinking about the fact that people had started to call Ziegler the Master of Pubic Hair. A questionable epithet, even if well-deserved. His depictions were indeed so detailed they bordered on the obscene.

While I was still pondering potential meanings of his words, Goebbels stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

“Without questioning the aesthetic value of Ziegler’s pictures,” he said, as if thinking aloud, “sometimes I do wonder if we’re doing ourselves a favour by making everything to plainly visible. Isn’t it natural to be drawn to the unknown? Like-” he looked at me with these unsettlingly large brown eyes, “Do you think it’s possible we will ever feel surfeited with the female form?”

He was absent-mindedly playing with his cigarette case, turning it between his fingers, just as I was turning his words around in my head. I felt trapped by their possible implications. Did he want to find out if I held sympathies for homosexuals or modernists? I couldn’t tell but it was both equally unsettling.

“But don’t women come in hundreds, even thousands of forms?” I said. “How would you ever grow tired of them?”

He tilted his head a little, which gave him the appearance of a clever bird, then he snapped open the cigarette case and took out another cigarette.

“So you can’t imagine being more curious about-” He paused for the fraction of a second, tapping his cigarette against the table top. “Something else.”

I thought of Caravaggio, Michelangelo, ancient Greece. Men were not depicted the same way as women, they rarely are, but he seemed satisfied with the knowledge that he made me think about them that way. I could see it in his smile before he put the cigarette between his lips. I waited until he had lit it before I answered.

“There are more kinds of beauty than the erotic,” I said, watching him pull at his cigarette, the glow a quick flare of bright orange, then how his face moved as he sucked down the smoke, how his cheekbones grew even more pronounced, his features more hollow. I had heard a lot of vile rumours about him. Maybe some of them were true after all? Some part of me couldn’t help beginning to recognise the strange handsomeness, women saw in him.

A soft breeze caressed my skin and made me realise how hot and sweaty I felt.

“There is beauty in strength, in discipline, in greatness…” I continued, somewhat lost. Something about him was so utterly strange, I could not quite wrap my mind around it. Perhaps it was the way he studied me, I felt scrutinised, examined. I didn’t trust Goebbels one bit and I had no desire to end up on the wrong side of the Führer, just because the Doctor deemed me a friend of degenerates. The issue with Nolde had been lesson enough.

“Art is supposed to reveal what is usually hidden,” I said, racking my brain for some catchy line that would satisfy him. “It’s always more than what it seems.”

Goebbels opened his mouth, slowly breathing out the smoke. Then he gave me a disarming little smile and the tension vanished.

“Yes, yes, you are right of course,” he said, flicking his cigarette over the ashtray, pushing Helga’s painting aside with careful fingers. “So where was I? Ah, yes this film…”

While he was returning to the previous topic I picked up my own cigarette case. I noticed my fingers felt numb when I opened it and took out a cigarette, as if I had been touched by something dangerous, forbidden for a moment and just with a bit of luck gotten away. How you do you say? Fortune favours the fools. It was probably true for all of us.

I let my gaze travel over the scenery, the gentle wooded peaks, the bold proud rocks beneath, looming high into the cloudless sky. It was a truly beautiful day, like taken straight from a picture postcard. Everything seemed to be in perfect order and I tried not to question too much what the Doctor might or might not have insinuated. 

There is another saying that was even more true in these days: Ignorance is bliss. 

~

**Author's Note:**

> For more nazi fic curated by the Baldur von Schirach Society for Poetic Souls (BvSSfPS) go to [aus-der-traum.tumblr.com](https://aus-der-traum.tumblr.com)


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